Access to Genetic Resources and Benefit Sharing: Main Aspect of Some Legal Frameworks

Gene Patents at Home and Abroad: Should the WTO Take Action in Light of Myriad?

This thesis takes the expression intellectual property (IP) with Chinese characteristics as a departure point to reflect on the interplay between IP, industrial and innovation policies in contemporary China. Inspired by legal anthropology and political economy, it aims at highlighting what is concealed and what is elicited by the expression. In around 40 years, China went from a nearly non-existent to a very stringent IP system. It is the largest applicant of patents in the world, and actively engages at the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). Persistent counterfeiting, access to medicines, artificial intelligence, and reduced freedom to operate are main issues at stake. In this context, the thesis compares the Made in China and the Made in China 2025, which represent the shift from an economic model based on relatively cheap manufacturing with little IP protection to the pursuits of Chinas technological dominance with hightechnology and strong IP protection. It provides a historical overview and assesses the recent amendments in the period 2019-2021, which are based on foreign pressure by the US-China trade war and the interests of domestic firms in IP protection. It also conducts an analysis of some of the main contemporary aspects of the Chinese IP system, including the expansion in IP applications, the use of national security, the creation of specialized courts, policies to create a culture of IP in schools and universities, and ostensive anti-counterfeiting policies. Subsequently, the research deals with how the IP with Chinese characteristics reverberates internationally. To that aim, it conducts an analysis of Chinas stances at the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), where the country tends to adopt intermediary positions. This section is partly based on a series of interviews and an ethnographic experience as participant observer in Geneva (2018-2021). It also develops Chinas IP stances in the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) and its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), as examples of its increased role in regional and bilateral IP. China conducts procedural harmonization and cooperation-based activities but does not push its own Chinese legal standards. Therefore, it concludes that there is no Chinese standard in IP, but its role as norm-maker will invariably continue to grow. This may offer opportunities for Latin America. In the following chapter, the research addresses the politics of pharmaceutical patents and Covid-19 vaccines. It provides an analysis of IP and access to medicines in China, and its adoption of multiple TRIPS-Plus norms, which largely reduces the policy space of the country to ensure affordable access to medicines. The non-IP regulatory scope of tools available to the Chinese State can limit the detrimental impacts in China but may not be enough. The chapter then assesses the pharmaceutical sector in the country, noting how Chinese companies aim at becoming global big pharma, which this is in line with Chinas aspirations to achieve technological dominance. At the World Health Organization (WHO), China has committed to treating vaccines as global public goods. At the same time, it has incentivized patenting of all technologies via fasttrack policies, and heavily invested and coordinated the Covid-19 R&D research. China has been the main provider of Covid-19 vaccines in the global south but uses it to advance its geopolitical interests. The Sinovac-Butantan partnership highlights some interactions and a transnational publicprivate regulation between China and Brazil. The chapter presents the debates on the WTO TRIPS waiver proposal and the mostly cautious, background role of China despite its key position in the access to Covid-19 vaccines. It concludes with a parallel between the idea of vaccine diplomacy and IP nationalism are correlated issues. The next chapter argues that IP is part of a nation-building process and surrounded by a specter of modernity. In contemporary China, this is associated to a forward-looking and futuristic ideal that positively values the high-tech. For this reason, the figure of the IP pirate is a public enemy to be combatted since it represents the backwards and the illicit. However, categories of copy and authenticity are not pre-existing, but constructed something which Tianducheng, a Chinese copy of Paris with its own aura, elucidates. The concluding remarks argue that China offers a lesson for countries to use their policy space to conduct IP and innovation policies differently from the expectations of Western countries. However, it does not present a techno-diverse, critical alternative: instead, it reinforces existing structures. At the very end, drawing a comparison with Brazil, the thesis concludes with the need to envision alternative intellectual properties, which should not be based on exclusionary concepts of nationalisms and the private, but rather on inclusionary ideas of global and the public.

The Colour of Copyright

PII: S0172-2190(04)00143-7

U.S. Plant Variety Protection: Sound and Fury...?

Trade treaties and legal agreements generally left Indigenous peoples and colonized communities out of negotiations that directly impacted them. Using Critical Discourse Analysis, informed by decolonial thinking and Nishnaabeg epistemology, this research study analyzed the language of five public documents, published by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) and the World Trade Organization (WTO), surrounding the protection of Traditional Knowledge (TK) through the sui generis legal figure and its connection to the development of digitization TK. As TK is largely uncommodifiable, the ability to identify and protect TK through Intellectual Property Rights within the WIPO and the WTO is encumbered. The research analyzed and explored how language and knowledge shape policy and ideology against historically marginalized people and communities through discourse enacted by the WIPO and the WTO.

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes 1. This article outlines material from a longer study of the World Intellectual Property Organisation prepared for the Global Institutions (Routledge) series, and I thank the series editors for permission to draw on that study for this Global Monitor. 2. All membership figures are drawn from the WIPO Treaties – Contracting Parties database. 3. This period of the history of intellectual property is covered at length in Christopher May & Susan Sell, Intellectual Property Rights: A Critical History (Lynne Rienner, 2005), ch. 5. 4. Ruth Gana, ‘Has Creativity Died in the Third World? Some Implications of the Internationalisation of Intellectual Property’, Denver Journal of International Law and Policy, Vol. 24, No. 1 (1995), p. 137. 5. Craig N. Murphy, International Organization and Industrial Change: Global Governance since 1850 (Polity Press, 1994), ch. 2 and passim. 6. As a result of the time constraints, none of the original members was able to ratify the Convention Establishing the World Intellectual Property Organization before 1970, but in that year 20 states completed the process. 7. Arpad Bogsch, The First Twenty-Five Years of the World Intellectual Property Organization from 1967 to 1992, WIPO Publication No. 881 (International Bureau of Intellectual Property, 1992), p. 28. 8. Ibid. 9. Agreement between the UN and the WIPO, available at http://www.wipo.int/treaties/en/agreement (accessed 19 December 2005). 10. World Intellectual Property Organization, Introduction to Intellectual Property Theory and Practice (Kluwer Law International, 1997), p. 30. 11. Ibid., p. 42. 12. Technical assistance and capacity building for intellectual property is explored at considerably more length in Christopher May, ‘Capacity Building and the (Re)production of Intellectual Property Rights’, Third World Quarterly, Vol. 25, No. 5 (2004), pp. 821–37. 13. Ibid. 14. Stephen Gill, Power and Resistance in the New World Order (Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), p. 132. 15. Ibid., p. 196. 16. Ibid., p. 177. 17. Much of this section draws on the work of William New at IP Watch and Sisule Musungu, both of whom have been keen observers of the political debates underlying the development of the Development Agenda. I am grateful to them both for their extensive reportage, little of which is explicitly cited here but has informed much that set out in this Global Monitor. 18. Brazil's previous major attempt in 1961 to raise these issues (at the UN) is discussed at length in Andréa Koury Menescal, ‘Changing WIPO's Ways? The 2004 Development Agenda in Historical Perspective’, Journal of World Intellectual Property, Vol. 8, No. 6 (2005), pp. 761–96. 19. Sisule F. Musungu, ‘The WIPO Assemblies 2004: A Review of the Outcomes’, South Bulletin, No. 89 (15 October 2004), pp. 1–5. 20. The Development Agenda was reproduced in the South Bulletin, No. 88 (30 September 2004), and all quotes are taken from this source. 21. Sisule F. Musungu, ‘A Review of the Outcomes of WIPO Discussions on the Development Agenda Proposal’, Bridges, Vol. 8, No. 9 (October 2004), pp. 21–2. 22. See the elaboration reproduced in South Bulletin, No. 101 (15 April 2005). 23. May & Sell, Intellectual Property Rights, ch. 7. 24. Space precludes a full discussion of all the various proposals, but an overview can be found in Sisule F. Musungu, Rethinking innovation, development and intellectual property in the UN: WIPO and beyond, TRIPS Issues Papers: 5, Quaker United Nations Office, 2005, section 3.2.1. 25. Sisule F. Musungu & Graham Dutfield, Multilateral agreements and a TRIPs-plus world: The World Intellectual Property Organisation, TRIPs Issue Papers: 3, Quaker United Nations Office, 2003, p. 19. 26. Ibid., pp. 19–20. 27. Musungu, ‘The WIPO Assemblies 2004’. 28. William New, ‘Industry Concerned About Development Agenda at WIPO’, Intellectual Property Watch, 4 November 2005, http://ip-watch.org/weblog/wp-trackback.php/125 (accessed 24 November 2005).

This chapter explores the international politics of intellectual property protection within the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). It looks at power dynamics and the distributive issues of winners and losers to argue that the current emphasis on strict and expansive intellectual property rules has been initiated by the industrialized countries and their industries and does not cater to the needs of non-dominant actors, particularly developing countries. After providing an overview of intellectual property rights, capacity building, and “informational development” in developing countries, the chapter turns to the global governance of intellectual property and the rise of internationalism in intellectual property governance. It also discusses the globalization of intellectual property’s governance and the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) agreement before concluding by outlining ways in which non-dominant actors can exploit the flexibilities provided by the relevant mechanisms to promote developmental and public interest objectives.

The increasing complexity of intellectual property (IP) rights enforcement in Africa, especially in sectors such as creative arts, software, trademarks, and patents, necessitates a shift from traditional litigation toward more flexible and efficient mechanisms. This study explores the role of Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) including mediation, arbitration, expert determination, and hybrid models in resolving IP disputes across the African continent, with a particular focus on Nigeria. In Nigeria, the Arbitration and Mediation Act of 2023 marks a significant milestone by recognizing electronic communication, legalizing third-party funding, and codifying enforcement mechanisms for arbitral awards. The Copyright Act of 2022 further allows for arbitration in copyright-related disputes. These legal frameworks, supported by the National Policy on Arbitration and ADR (2024–2028), have established a conducive environment for resolving IP conflicts outside the courts. Sectoral initiatives by the Nigerian Copyright Commission (NCC), in collaboration with the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), have promoted the use of mediation clinics, particularly in Nollywood and the music industry. This paper analyzes the benefits of ADR in IP contexts, including time and cost savings, confidentiality, procedural flexibility, and the ability to appoint technically knowledgeable neutrals. It also discusses persistent challenges such as lack of statutory clarity on IP arbitrability, capacity deficits in ADR training, and post-arbitration litigation risks. The study further proposes future directions such as legal reform to clarify IP arbitrability, expansion of hybrid ADR mechanisms, integration of online dispute resolution (ODR) tools, and enhanced public education on ADR. By synthesizing legal, institutional, and practical dimensions of ADR in IP enforcement, this paper argues that Africa especially Nigeria is poised to lead a regional transformation toward non-litigious resolution of IP disputes. The findings are crucial for policymakers, IP practitioners, and creative industry stakeholders seeking to harness ADR for sustainable innovation and legal certainty in the protection of intellectual property rights.

The World Trade Organisation (WTO) agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) has reawakened old arguments over the impact of the intellectual property (IP) system on public access to essential medicines. As used here, essential medicines are those needed in symptom management, palliative care, and in the treatment of infections, such as human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), malaria, tuberculosis, and sleeping sickness in places like sub-Saharan Africa. Some argue that patents will further inhibit access to these medicines in sub-Saharan Africa. Others, however, argue the opposite. The latter maintain that patent protection under TRIPS can promote the growth of the pharmaceutical industry in places like sub-Saharan Africa. Moreover, they assert that pharmaceutical patents are not responsible for the limited access to essential medicines in sub-Saharan Africa. Instead, they trace the problem of access to non-patent factors, such as poverty, the lack of supportive infrastructure, and poor governance. This paper set out to assess these contrasting arguments, with a view to determining the actual impact that pharmaceutical patents may be having on access to essential medicines in sub-Saharan Africa. Keyword search of electronic databases was conducted, in addition to a review of relevant literature from print sources. A manual analysis then followed. It was found that, rather than a single set of factors, both patent and nonpatent factors combine to inhibit access to essential medicines in sub-Saharan Africa. It is imperative for sub-Saharan African countries to review current tariff and taxation policies, take steps to improve the supply of vital infrastructure, and strengthen their overall healthcare systems. They should also ensure that their IP systems are supportive of public healthcare needs. Equally important, is that TRIPS and the IP system should be more supportive of sub-Saharan Africa’s struggle to bear its disease burden, rather than focusing narrowly on profit maximisation for pharmaceutical companies. Sub-Saharan Africa also needs increased international financing, private-public collaboration in research, and the sharing of benefits in order to cater effectively for the health needs of its citizens. Key words: Trade-related aspects of intellectual property rights (trips), essential medicines, sub-Saharan Africa, pharmaceutical, patents, access, malaria, human immunodeficiency virus/ acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (HIV/AIDS).

Purpose – The paper aims to examine whether the panel and parties of China – Intellectual Property Rights could have applied the general principle of necessity developed under Article XX of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade and Article XIV of the General Agreement on Trade in Services. This paper specifically seeks to examine applicability of the general principle of necessity in the World Trade Organization (WTO) tribunal's analysis of the provisions of the Berne Convention, which is incorporated by Article 9 of the Trade‐related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) Agreement.

QL MLKYYT (M) HQUQLARINA DAR KONVENSYALARIN HMYYT: HMN KONVENSYALARDA BZ

Pakistan is an agricultural country and numerous plant varieties have been developed indigenously by local scientists. There was a long felt need to introduce any sort of protection mechanism for these novel plant varieties to protect the research and development (R&D). Being a World Trade Organization (WTO) member, Pakistan acceded to the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) agreement in 1995, and since then, legislation was due to protect the rights of breeders of new plant varieties. In 2016, the Government of Pakistan passed the Plant Breeder’s Rights Act (PBRA), in alignment with the International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants Convention of 1991 (UPOV), balancing the interests of biotechnology companies and traditional plant breeders. The current study highlights Pakistan's strengths and areas that still require improvement to meet the nation's demands for plant variety protection.

The article is devoted to issues of international legal principles in the field of implementation and protection of intellectual property objects in the aspect of influence on the processes of law enforcement and law-making in the field of criminal law of domestic legal systems. It is determined that the following are important for the criminal protection of intellectual property rights: the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS Agreement), the Convention on Cybercrime, the Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property, the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works, the Hague Agreement Concerning the International Registration of Industrial Designs, the Lisbon Agreement for the Protection of Appellations of Origin and their International Registration to them, and others. The relevance of this issue is due to the fact that, taking into account the processes of globalization of the world economy, as well as the process of integration of the legal systems of the countries of the world, the study of the international principles of criminal and legal protection of intellectual property is of great importance at the current stage of Ukraine’s development. The author determines that the concept of “intellectual property” should be understood as a type of property as a generic concept. Based on the analysis of the norms of international acts on the criminal protection of intellectual property rights, a number of problems have been identified that must be resolved in legislation, as well as legal science and practice. These problems include: 1) the problem of determining in which sections of the criminal codes the norms establishing criminal liability for infringement of intellectual property rights should be located. It is proposed to combine the norms establishing criminal liability for infringement of intellectual property rights into one section “Criminal offenses against intellectual property” in the Criminal Code of Ukraine; 2) the problem of determining which objects of intellectual property should be protected by the norms of criminal law. Key words: criminal liability, intellectual property, criminal legal protection, World Intellectual Property Organization, European Union.

Contents: Volume I Acknowledgements Introduction Rohan Kariyawasam PART I WTO, TELECOMMUNICATIONS AND ANTITRUST 1. Wonki Min (2000), 'Telecommunications Regulations: Institutional Structures and Responsibilities' 2. Yoshiko Kurisaki (1995), 'The Changing Role of Telecommunications in the Economy: Globalisation and Its Impact on National Telecommunications Policy' 3. Rohan Kariyawasam (2007), 'International Telecommunications' 4. Peter L. Smith and Bjoern Wellenius (1999), 'Mitigating Regulatory Risk in Telecommunications' 5. Marco C.E.J. Bronckers and Pierre Larouche (1997), 'Telecommunication Services and the World Trade Organization' 6. Lee Tuthill (1996), 'Users' Rights? The Multilateral Rules on Access to Telecommunications' 7. Lee Tuthill (1997), 'The GATS and New Rules for Regulators' 8. Mark Naftel and Lawrence J. Spiwak (2000), 'The WTO and the Reference Paper: An Ostensible Blueprint for Entry' 9. Markus Fredebeul-Krein and Andreas Freytag (1997), 'Telecommunications and WTO Discipline: An Assessment of the WTO Agreement on Telecommunication Services' 10. Timothy Denton (2002), 'Protocol Interfaces Are the New Bottlenecks: What the Internet Means for Telecom Regulation' 11. Rohan Kariyawasam (2005), 'Defining Dominance for Bits and Bytes: A New Layering Theory for Interpreting Significant Market Power?' 12. Sonali Singh (2006), 'The Telmex Dispute at the WTO: Competition Makes a Backdoor Entry' 13. Eleanor M. Fox (2006), 'The WTO's First Antitrust Case - Mexican Telecom: A Sleeping Victory for Trade and Competition' PART II THE CLASSIFICATION OF ELECTRONIC INTANGIBLES IN THE WTO 14. Peter Hill (1999), 'Tangibles, Intangibles and Services: A New Taxonomy for the Classification of Output' 15. Rohan Kariyawasam (2007), 'The Classification of Electronic Intangibles in the WTO' 16. Claude E. Barfield (2003), 'Electronic Commerce and the Gats Negotiations' 17. Harald Sander (2003), 'Electronic Commerce and Gats Negotiation (Some Comments on a Paper by Claude E. Barfield)' 18. Sacha Wunsch-Vincent (2006), 'The Internet, Cross-Border Trade in Services, and the GATS: Lessons from US-Gambling' 19. Federico Ortino (2006), 'Treaty Interpretation and the WTO Appellate Body Report in US - Gambling: A Critique' 20. Maria Veronica Perez Asinari (2006), 'Internet Gambling and Betting Services: When the GATS' Rules Are Not Applied Due to the Public Morals/Public Order Exception. What Lessons Can Be Learnt?' Name Index Volume II: Acknowledgements Introduction Rohan Kariyawasam PART I WTO AND ELECTRONIC COMMERCE 1. Heinz Hauser and Sacha Wunsch-Vincent (2000/2001), 'A Call for the WTO E-Commerce Initiative' 2. Daniel Piazolo (2001), 'Multilateral and European Responses to E-Commerce' 3. Sacha Wunsch-Vincent (2003), 'The Digital Trade Agenda of the U.S.: Parallel Tracks of Bilateral, Regional and Multinational Liberalization' 4. Michael Hart and Ramesh Chaitoo (1999), 'Electronic Commerce and International Trade Rules' 5. Olivier Cattaneo and Julia Nielson (2002), 'Regulation of Services Traded Electronically' 6. Rosemary Morris (2000), 'Electronic Commerce: A Cluster Approach to the Negotiation of Input Services' PART II INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS, BILATERALISM AND TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER 7. Keith E. Maskus (1998), 'The Role of Intellectual Property Rights in Encouraging Foreign Direct Investment and Technology Transfer' 8. Olivier Cattaneo (2003), 'Intellectual Property Rights in the New Economy: Technological Changes and the Protection of Intellectual Property Rights' 9. Carlos M. Correa (2000), 'Implications of Intellectual Property Rights for the Access to and Use of Information Technologies in Developing Countries' 10. Peter Drahos (2001), 'Bilateralism in Intellectual Property' PART III DEVELOPING COUNTRIES, THE NEW ECONOMY AND THE WTO 11. Sanjeev Dewan, Dale Ganley and Kenneth L. Kraemer (2005), 'Across the Digital Divide: A Cross-Country, Multi-Technology Analysis of the Determinants of IT Penetration' 12. Lars T. Soeftestad and Maung K. Sein (2003), 'ICT and Devolopment: East is East and West is West and the Twain may yet Meet. On the Process of Implementing an ICT-Strategy in the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (NORAD)' 13. Rohan Kariyawasam (2007), 'Developing Countries and Telecommunications' 14. Peter F. Cowhey and Mikhail M. Kilmenko (2001), 'Implementing Telecommunications Liberalization in Developing Countries after the WTO Agreement on Basic Telecommunications Services' 15. Arvind Panagariya (2000), 'E-Commerce, WTO and Developing Countries' 16. Catherine L. Mann (2000), 'Electronic Commerce in Developing Countries: Issues for Domestic Policy and WTO Negotiations' 17. David Vivas Eugui (2001), 'Issues on the Relationship Between E-Commerce and Intellectual Property Rights in the WTO: Implications for Developing Countries' Name Index